Semiauto pistol - Forgotten Weapons

Union/Reifgraber .32 S&W Autopistol at RIA

November 28, 2015 Ian McCollum 36

The Reifgraber, aka Union Automatic Pistol, is an interesting mechanical design from an inventor with an interesting personal background. Joseph Joachim Reifgraber was born in Austria in 1856, and emigrated to the United States at […]

Erika 4.25mm Pistol at RIA

November 25, 2015 Ian McCollum 37

Today we’re looking an another early European micro-pistol. This is the Erika, developed by Franz Pfannl and chambered for the 4.25mm Liliput cartridge (which develops approximately 1/4 the energy of the .25 ACP). These pistols […]

Detonics MkI at RIA: The Original Sub-Compact 1911

November 23, 2015 Ian McCollum 40

Today we are accustomed to seeing sub-compact 3.5″ 1911 pistols for sale from a whole bunch of manufacturers – but this was not always the case. Making a really small 1911 actually run reliably is […]

Plus Ultra: The Supersized Ruby Pistol at RIA

November 21, 2015 Ian McCollum 29

The “Plus Ultra” was a variation on the Ruby automatic pistol made by Gabilondo y Urresti (the original holders of the Ruby trademark) just shortly before they changed their name to Llama. The Plus Ultra […]

Colt Z40 Pistol #1 at RIA

November 15, 2015 Ian McCollum 50

However, after only 800 had been sold, Colt backed out of the deal and dropped the Z40 from its catalog. Why? Because they had happened to use a Z40 as the base gun for a […]

Colt Model 1909 Automatic at RIA

November 11, 2015 Ian McCollum 28

A while back I put together a video on the development of the Colt/Browning 1911 pistol, and one of the missing links in that video was the Model 1909. Well, one of the 23 Model […]

Sunngård 1909 Pistol

November 8, 2015 Ian McCollum 20

Just a photo – of probably the nicest Sunngård pistol in existence today, along with its holster. Thanks to Lars for sending it!

Q&A Video, November 2015

November 6, 2015 Ian McCollum 17

Thanks to the awesome people supporting Forgotten Weapons through Patreon for sending in more questions that I could get to for another month! This month the subjects include: Browning lock vs others in handguns Best […]

2-Gun WWI Extravaganza: BEF vs German Landser (Video)

November 4, 2015 Ian McCollum 34

This is the second of our two videos from the most recent 2-Gun match, which was designed with an explicit World War One theme. This one is a head to head match between me, kitted […]

Landstad 1900 Autorevolver Disassembly

November 3, 2015 Ian McCollum 20

You may recall seeing my post about the Landstad model 1900 semiauto revolver a while back… Well, the gun (only one was ever made) was in a British collections for a hundred years, but recently […]